Dead Hunt Part 20

Garnett walked over to the three of them. "You didn't know about this?" he asked.

"No," said Diane.

"Is he allowed to do this... call this kind of meeting on his own?" Garnett asked.

She had never told Jin he couldn't. It never occurred to her to say, Jin, don't call meetings of U.S. marshals and the chief of detectives without my approval. Jin, don't call meetings of U.S. marshals and the chief of detectives without my approval.

Diane pinched the bridge of her nose. The thing about her crew was you had to be specific with instructions.

"I see he didn't ask Riddmann to attend," said Diane, looking around her. "That's a plus."

"I have some news for you about Riddmann," said Garnett in a low voice.

Diane raised her eyebrows. "He's moving to Alaska, I hope?"

Garnett ignored her. "You know how guilty he looked when you accused him of leaking to the press about the museum issue?" he said.

"I remember very well. Don't tell me he's behind it," said Diane.

"No, I don't think he is. At least my sources tell me he isn't. But he did do something to twist the knife a little. He had one of his staff call in to the radio talk show and ask questions designed to embarra.s.s the museum. It was aimed at Mrs. Van Ross."

"Well, he hit his mark. It upset her, which is not a good thing," said Diane. "He has to know that sometimes payback's a b.i.t.c.h."

"That's why he did it anonymously. And it would have stayed that way, but I have an ear in his department. Just thought you'd like to know."

"You never know who's listening in Rosewood, do you? I'm glad you found out," said Diane. "And I'm glad you told me. That little p.i.s.sant."

"Any idea what this is about?" Garnett gestured to the Christmas trees and the lined-up chairs.

"Not a clue," said Diane. "Neither does David. When he called I thought you were here to tell me you had found Clymene's body."

"We've come up empty so far on that," he said.

"How about my attacker?" said Diane.

"Nothing yet. I'm still waiting for DNA results from Jin on the hair snagged on Andie's purse."

"It takes time. We just got the lab calibrated and certified and we already have people sending us samples. The backlog of DNA a.n.a.lysis in this country is . . ."

Jin appeared through the elevator doors. He was carrying what looked like handouts. What on earth? What on earth? thought Diane. thought Diane.

"Jin," she said. "What's this about?"

"All in good time," he said, grinning.

He was so hyperactive the marshals might have thought he'd been drinking too much caffeine, but Jin was always like this. Whatever he was up to, he had told neither Neva nor David. This would be interesting.

"Everyone sit down, please. I believe I have chairs for everyone," said Jin as if he were the host at a professional conference.

Diane watched his head bob gently as he silently counted the people and the chairs. Eight people, eight chairs. The marshals were already sitting. Kingsley and Jacobs sat beside them, then Garnett, Diane, Neva, and David.

Kingsley leaned over and spoke to Diane. "You were right." He pulled up his sleeve and pointed to a bruise on his forearm. "Barbiturates." He looked up at Jin, then back at Diane and grinned. "I'll talk with you after the show."

"I'm sure you all are wondering why I called this meeting," said Jin. "We're going to have a short workshop on genetics."

"What?" said Deputy Marshal Dylan Drew. "You called us here for a workshop?"

"Now, please bear with me, because the payoff is great," said Jin. "There's been some interesting progress made in the world of genetics lately. What I want to talk to you about is epigenetics. Epigenetics studies the changes in gene expression that don't require changes in the base sequence of the DNA itself."

"Okay, son," said Deputy Marshal Chad Merrick, "you've lost me already. What the h.e.l.l are you talking about and how does it affect me and my partner here? And can you please stop pacing and moving around?"

"He can't," said David.

Neva shook her head. "Nope, he really can't."

Jin ignored his coworkers. "I'm talking about making changes in the way genes"-he seemed to be searching his brain for a word-"the things that make genes function differently-when the basic DNA is still the same."

"Not helping," said Merrick.

"That's why I got the Christmas trees," said Jin.

"I've been sitting here worrying about that," said Drew.

"Say you have a gene for lung cancer but it is turned off-not doing anything. But because of your environment, say one full of secondhand smoke, a certain chemical group hooks onto your chromosome-like the decorations hooked onto a Christmas tree-and turns the gene on and you get cancer.

"Let's say these two identical Christmas trees were bought at the same place but taken to two different homes where they were decorated differently. The trees look different to us because of what's hanging on them, but underneath they are just alike. That's like two people with the same DNA who have lived in different environments."

Jin held a red tree ornament in one hand and a blue ornament in the other. "For two DNA sample profiles that look just alike on the base indicators, you can do an epigenetic profile, which means taking a little wider focus on the DNA structure, and see these differences," he said, indicating the different colored ornaments.

The hairs on the back of Diane's neck stood up. She glanced over at Kingsley, who looked wide-eyed.

Chad Merrick straightened up in his chair. "This has to do with Clymene or we wouldn't be here. Are you saying that Clymene is a twin?"

"No, not a twin," said Jin, grinning.

Now Diane was confused. That is exactly what she thought he was saying. So did Kingsley and the others.

David looked at her as if to say, I can't do anything with him. I can't do anything with him.

The marshals frowned at Jin.

"Let me tell you what got me to thinking about this," he said.

"If it clears things up, go to it, son," said Merrick.

"Too many things didn't add up. For one thing, why didn't anybody in Dr. Fallon's apartment building hear anything? Were they all drugged? Let me tell you, if the odd couple across the hall heard a life-and-death struggle going on, they would have been over there, and so would the people from downstairs. And why was Dr. Fallon drugged to make her sleep through the whole thing? You have to ask yourself that."

Jin paused and looked out at his audience, who were giving him their attention in hopes that it would be made clear why they were sitting there listening to him.

"We study blood patterns in this unit," continued Jin. "If you have enough blood, it can tell you all kinds of things, from the shape of the drops to the pattern on the walls. And Lord knows there was a lot of blood. One thing I noticed was the cast-off blood was more like a beating than a stabbing, but what we found was a cleaned-up knife.

"And what about all that blood? We found no arterial spray, no spurting. Not too unusual. People can just lie there and bleed out after an attack, but what did the perp do while that was happening? Sit in Dr. Fallon's living room and wait? Then finally, at four pints of blood on the floor, got tired of waiting and dragged the body out? Why didn't we find more blood on the way to Dr. Fallon's car? Even if Clymene's heart had stopped, she would still have been leaking blood from her wounds. We only had a smear."

They all leaned forward, attentive now. Diane wasn't sure where he was going, but his a.n.a.lysis of the crime scene was interesting.

"But what really got me to thinking was, why clean the knife with kerosene-which is better than bleach, by the way, for getting rid of blood. Why clean it and then leave it in the trunk to be found alongside the blood? That made no sense. Then it hit me. They weren't trying to hide what was on the knife, but what wasn't wasn't on the knife." Jin paused for dramatic effect. on the knife." Jin paused for dramatic effect.

"Skin cells. It was a serrated knife. There should have been a lot of skin cells if that was the murder weapon. We found no skin cells."

"I take your point," said Garnett, "but what does this mean?"

"I'm getting to that," said Jin. "All of these questions led me to go back and resample the blood and do an epigenetic profile. And low and behold..."

Jin flipped over a page on the chart, showing a drawing that looked to Diane to be an outline of the blood pattern on her living room floor. But Jin had drawn another pattern inside the outline.

"The blood on Dr. Fallon's floor came from two contributors with the same DNA. The blood was poured out of two containers that left overlapping patterns something like this." He traced the patterns on the chart with his finger. "But the real kicker-Are you ready for this? I told you it would be great-both blood sources matched Clymene's DNA . . . but neither neither matched her epigenetic profile. It wasn't her." matched her epigenetic profile. It wasn't her."

Chapter 33.

All eight of them sat staring at Jin as he lifted the piece of white fabric, revealing a third Christmas tree. This one was decorated with candy canes. There was silence for several moments. Finally Kingsley spoke up after looking at the three trees openmouthed.

"Are you saying she is a triplet?" he said.

Jin's grin broadened. "She could be one of a set of quintuplets as far as we know. I just have three contributors."

"More important, are you saying she's alive?" said Merrick.

He and Drew exchanged glances and leaned forward as if somewhere in the three trees they might catch a glimpse of her.

"She could have gotten hit by a truck this morning and be dead, but she didn't die in Dr. Fallon's apartment," said Jin. "No one did, as far as the evidence shows. But two very anemic people left there."

"She's alive," said Diane. "And she's bought herself a really big head start."

"You would never even know to look for her again were it not for Jin," said David. "Way to go, buddy. Sorry for thinking you'd finally gone over the edge."

The two marshals did not look happy. "Can you tell us anything that will help us find her?" said Merrick.

"Nothing definite," said Jin. "But I can tell you something interesting." He brought the third tree around and set it beside the other two. "This is Clymene," he said of the tree with the candy canes. "The other two, the one with the red ornaments and the one with the blue ornaments, are her two sisters. There's been a lot of twin studies in epigenetic research. Twin babies have, as you would expect, very similar epigenetic profiles. The older they get, the more different experiences they have, the more divergent their profiles get-that's especially true in twins that have been separated at birth or at some other point in their lives. Clymene's two sisters have similar profiles to each other. Clymene's is very different."

"Clymene was separated from her two sisters at some point," said Kingsley. He was literally on the edge of his seat. "Is that what you are saying?"

"Yes," said Jin. "I don't know if that will help catch her, but I thought it was interesting."

"In a way, it supports what Shane mentioned," said Kingsley. "The Clymene in Greek mythology was a daughter whose father sold her into slavery. She may have chosen that name to commemorate an event in her own life."

"The Greek Clymene also had two sisters, by the way," said Shane Jacobs.

"Well, h.e.l.l," said Merrick. He turned his attention from Jin to Kingsley. "You said she won't go anyplace we would know to look for her. So we don't know where to start."

Diane noticed that the marshals seemed more willing now to listen to Kingsley's ideas on Clymene, as if suddenly the knowledge the profiler possessed might be of more use than mere academic curiosity. At this point, Diane guessed they would take all the help they could get.

"No, she wouldn't. She will hide in a persona we don't know about," Kingsley said.

"Would she come here after Dr. Fallon? She seems to want to get even," said Merrick.

It struck Diane that he was considering using her as bait.

Kingsley shook his head.

"I think messing with Diane was just icing. Clymene planned this diversion to draw attention away from herself by making everyone focus on Diane." Kingsley nodded toward Garnett. "Which was helped greatly by your DA when he s.h.i.+fted investigative resources from looking for Clymene to trying to figure out what Diane might have done with her body."

"I'll be sure and tell Riddmann that," commented Garnett.

David turned to the marshals. "I'm sure you recalled your BOLO on Clymene once Diane was accused of having killed her."

"Only because you guys said she was dead," said Drew. "We don't normally issue BOLOs on corpses." He wasn't defensive so much as exasperated.

"I think Clymene did a good job of fooling all of us," said Diane. "All cons are good magicians and that's just what she did, a little sleight of hand." She stood up and stretched her legs.

"So," said Merrick. "Where do we look now? Do we plaster her photograph everywhere?"

"Maybe, but it might force her deeper into hiding," said Kingsley.

"I think we should," said Neva. "She has a real problem. She has two sisters who look just like her. That makes our chances of finding one of them three times as good. All three will have to go into hiding. How far does their loyalty go, to disrupt their lives that way?"

"I think they will be plenty loyal," said Shane. "If they've gotten this deep in it together, it means that they're devoted. You won't break them apart."

"Who are you?" asked Garnett.

"Yeah, who are you?" echoed Drew.

"Oh, of course, you don't know me." He grinned. "I'm Shane Jacobs, FBI agent from the art theft division." He held out his hand, which Garnett and the others shook in turn.

"So, Clymene's been stealing art too?" said Drew with raised brow.

"The girl gets around," said Merrick.

Jacobs laughed. "There is the possibility that in her effort to make Dr. Fallon's life miserable, she misdirected some stolen artifacts to this museum. I have no proof of Clymene's involvement, but I thought I'd crash your party anyway. As for my statement about not being able to break Clymene and her sisters apart, I'm also an identical twin and I know the attachment of twins to each other."

"Really?" said Drew. "Your brother's in the FBI too?"

"He's a professor of art history at Brown," he said.